Background: Putting evidence into practice is a critical step in the application of clinical practice guidelines. However, the facilitators and barriers to guideline implementation is still lacking.
Objectives: To systematically review the hotspots and future research prospects of strategies and barriers to the implementation of the guidelines.
Methods: We searched the electronic databases Web of Science Core Collection for barriers and strategies for clinical guideline implementation from inception to October 24, 2022. The relevant research were analyzed using VOSviewer1.6.18, CiteSpace6.1.R3 and Prisma 9.3 to iterating over authors, co-cited authors, countries/regions, organizations, journals, co-cited journals, citation bursts for references, co-cited references, keywords and year of publication.
Results: The first article on research on strategies and barriers to guideline implementation was published in 1983, and a total of 21,768 related studies have been published in the past 40 years. The three journals with the most published related research are Implementation Sci (367, 1.69%), BMJ open (354, 1.63%) and BMC Health Serv Res (310, 1.42%), and the three journals with the most co-citations are BMJ (8966, 3.80%), New Engl JMed (7277, 3.08%) and Lancet (7186, 3.04%). Grimshaw JM, as the author of many published articles (88, 0.40%), is also the second co-cited author (1904, 3.72%). The United States (8214, 37.73%) and the United Kingdom (3682,16.90%) are the top two countries that publish the most relevant research, and 3 of the top 5 institutions that publish research are from Canada, namely the University of Toronto (730, 2.76%), the University of Sydney (444, 1.68%) and McMaster University (377, 1.43%). The most frequently occurring keywords are clinical practice guidelines, followed by implementation.
Conclusions: The number of researches on strategies and barriers to guideline implementation publications has increased significantly since 2007. The journal with the most published related research is Implementation Sci, and the USA is the country that contribute the most publication. There is active cooperation between different countries/regions and institutions, but the cooperation between authors needs to be strengthened. It is hoped that more and more researchers will pay more attention to the translation of knowledge in the future.